Criterion Closet Picks with Scrooge et al
by Gerard Cypriako
Summary: Scrooge and affiliates are invited to the Criterion Collection Closet Library to pick some movies and discuss why they like them.


_The Criterion Closet presents_

The Other Side of Hope is one of my favorite movies from 2017. I saw it when it came out, and I've seen a bunch of other Aki Kaurismaki movies, and this one is the best shot; and because it is so current and so real, this is the type of movie that makes me laugh. At the Berlin Film Festival he said it was going to be his last, which is a shame because we need movies about how the world sucks and everybody is annoying.

_Gyro Gearloose DVD Picks_

**(Grabbing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Terry Gilliam)**

My favorite movie from Gilliam, it's perfectly cast, it's better than the books and it's funny every time.

**(Taking out By Brakhage: An Anthology Volume I by Stan Brakhage)**

This thing hypnotized me into seeing blues, reds, textures and patterns for an hour. It's that good. I have yet to finish it, but it's ideal - IDEAL -for sleepless nights.

**(Showing off Jellyfish Eyes by Takashi Murakami)**

I haven't seen many Japanese movies, but this is the most Japanese you can get. It's a portrayal of Japan after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, but that's selling it short because it's a sci-fi fantasy starring kids. I can't even describe it. It is absolutely insane. This is what my years of watching Digimon prepared me for.

**(Picking a copy of Close Up by Abbas Kiarostami)**

This movie shook me to my core. I couldn't believe what was happening. By the end, it left me on the verge of tears. Of happy tears.

**(Spotting Salò by Pier Paolo Pasolini and immediately yanking it out the closet library)**

Of course, every movie of Pasolini that takes on Italian fascism, I enjoy them. I also like Oedipus Rex* because of this.

I already have a copy of this** (raising a copy of Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky)** but I'll take it, because Tarkovsky has influenced my body of work in many ways.

**(With an impressed gasp, picking Frances Ha by Noah Baumbach)**

This...This is the only valid movie. I can't stand Noah Baumbach, but Greta is brilliant in this. This might be my favorite movie, I've seen it like ten times. It's a sad movie, maybe the saddest thing ever, but it's fun. It's an ennui movie.

**(Adjusting glasses and taking a copy of I Vitelloni by Federico Fellini)**

I'm on a Fellini roll since I saw ROMA, and I'm going to finish it with 8 1/2. This one is in the middle, I'm not sure what it's about, but I'm seeing it today.

**(Grabbing Fat Girl by Catherine Breillat, inspecting it from both sides)**

Fat Girl is about a world that I've never experienced and never will, and a very honest approach to it. Saw it as a teen, and it stuck with me since.

**(Reaching for General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait by Barbet Schroeder and giving it a surprised gaze)**

This is one of the scariest documentaries ever made. This is phenomenology of a naked dictatorship. For this to be made possible, everyone had to act as if it were normal, and as an interviewer you have to stomach your subject talking about invading someplace. It makes me ill, I get physical reactions from this film.

**(Raising Peeping Tom by Michael Powell)**

This is a transgressive movie, even today. This is a correct exploration of something morbid, because it's not exploitative like those stupid crime investigation shows. It examines what it's showing and why we're prone to it, or familiar with it, or curious about it.

**(Picking The Obscure Object of Desire by Luis Buñuel)**

This is Buñuel's last film, with quite the psychoanalitical title, and I guess that it's a better version of Match Point**. I hope it is.

**(Picking My Brilliant Career by Gillian Armstrong)**

I have not seen this, but I saw the trailer, and I think I'll like it; it's a coming-of-age romance story in the nineteenth century. I like a film that challenges me; what I generally like about Criterion is that their collection consists of what true cinema is about, and not the banalities of Hollywood that dictate how we should live our lives. Movies like this one tend to be about normal people living normally and it just shows how things are, and that is more useful to really value our reality.

_Video ends_

*also by Pasolini

**by Woody Allen


End file.
